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> if Language A does not distinguish green and blue, it does not necessarily mean that the speakers of Language A cannot distinguish them, but only that Languag
by ealloc 14y ago
> if Language A does not distinguish green and blue, it does not necessarily mean that the speakers of Language A cannot distinguish them, but only that Language A does not distinguish them linguistically.
True, but just to be clear: In the first link in the article it's shown how people speaking languages with no blue/green distinction are significantly slower at selecting the 'odd one out' when given a set of blue shapes and one green shape. Furthermore, this effect is only significant in their right visual field, whose images are processed by the left (more language adept) part of the brain.
- ethanpoole 14y agoYes, but this evidence does not necessarily say very much about language and the relationship between language and thought. For example, if a culture does not teach their children to swim and therefore the culture at large does not know how to swim, those people could still swim, albeit slowly. Does this say anything about their bodies? No. If some sort of conditioning by one's culture is required to distinguish colours (which seems to be the case), this is very interesting, but it says very little about language.